We all know they are caught up in the warming meme, but the Met Office in the UK is now trying to spin the idea that they had truly forecasted a cold and snowy winter, but they just didn’t tell anyone. The rationale? We skeptics here (and elsewhere) are a bunch of meanies for making fun of the BBQ summer that never happened, so we’ll keep it to ourselves.

The spin you are about to witness is Maytag quality spin. It is shameless, stupid, and beyond anything I’ve ever seen.  Both James Delingpole and Autonomous Mind take the Met Office out for a spin cycle that ends up in a full stop. The propaganda is shameless, the smell odious, and the public relations disaster is even worse than before. They apparently just don’t know when to stop talking.

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From Autonomous Mind:

This is a potentially huge story with a nasty smell of conspiracy about it. There appears to be a concerted effort to whitewash serious failings at the Met Office, with the assistance of a senior climate change propagandist at the BBC who is fully bought in to the Met Office’s warmist agenda.

The Telegraph reports today that: ‘The Met Office knew that Britain was facing an early and exceptionally cold winter but failed to warn the public, hampering preparations for some of the coldest weather on record.’  The article goes on to say:

In October the forecaster privately warned the Government – with whom it has a contract – that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.

It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.

October? That is the same month that this temperature probability map was published – for public consumption:

There is absolutely no logical or rational basis for the Met Office publishing the probability map above, yet ‘secretly’ telling the government a completely different story. The Met Office not only published the map, it had meterologists speaking publicly about the map and setting an expectation of a very high probability of warmer than average winter, as I will explain…

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The stench of deceit surrounding the Met Office, it’s disgraceful self serving effort to mislead the public and apparent attempt by a publicly funded BBC journalist to distort the facts is overpowering. There now needs to be an independent inquiry into this whole matter. A Freedom of Information request is being submitted to ask for this secret October forecast.

Read the whole post here at: Autonomous Mind

From James Delingpole at the Telegraph:

So apparently the Met Office isn’t useless after all. Just cruelly misunderstood.

It seems that the reason it didn’t provide an accurate forecast of this winter was not because it didn’t know bad weather was coming. It was because we were all so horrid last time it made a boo boo over the infamous “barbecue summer” that it decided it wouldn’t make its forecasts public any more.

Which means the real victim of this sorry story is not us (for having been misled about the extremity of cold we could expect this winter) but the poor old, much-put-upon, much-maligned, but basically splendid and well worth the £170 million it costs us every year Met Office.

Hurrah, Hurrah and Thrice Hurrah for those magnificent men (and women: let’s not forget the great Julia Slingo) at the Met Office!

Hmm. Is anyone else as unpersuaded as I am by this extravagantly implausible piece of spin? There’s a big clue in the identity of the fellow from whom it originated: Roger Harrabin. Yes, Roger Harrabin as in the BBC’s High Priest of Gaian Worship and Climate Alarmism.

Read the whole post by James Delingpole at the Telegraph.

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Surely the good people of the UK have to be sick of this by now?

If you are, here’s my advice: picket the Met Office.

Borrow the tactics shown by the greens at Ratcliffe and Kingsnorth and show the burea-weasels what it’s like to feel the brunt of public scorn. A few protestors with a banner outside the Met Office (shown below) would be all it takes to make the news.

Demand accountability, not GIGO spin.